I was intrigued to read about Mandy Smith on thread #15. I have some tea on the Smith sisters, Nicola (the elder, best known for going out with Teddy Sheringham for a bit) and Mandy. I’m from their era, and I’m from the north west, where they live now.
First Nicola. She relocated to Manchester, following Teddy Sheringham, in the nineties when he played for Man U. She lived in a flat with him in Cheshire. Angling for marriage, of course: longing to be a footballer’s wife when that first became a thing. He wasn’t putting a ring on it, though. I heard that she fancied herself as one of the queen bees of the players’ lounge: hanging around with Posh and Mark Bosnich’s then wife and being spiteful to any women they saw as lesser WAGs or a threat. Including Jordan: apparently that story about them singing “who let the dogs out” when she came into the players’ lounge was true, and Nicola Smith later said in an interview, with some satisfaction, that Jordan ‘kept wandering around the room trying to find someone who would talk to her’ when she was going out with Dwight Yorke and going to watch games. Imagine how horrible that was, whilst the bitchy WAGs sneered at her! I’m no fan of KP but come on!
There’s no evidence of Nicola Smith actually having a job during this period. In interviews after Teddy Sheringham dumped her, she reminisces about having ‘girlie lunches’ with Posh and Sarah Bosnich. Like the witches of Eastwick. She also reminisced about being bored whilst Teddy was training etc, being so bored in fact that she even did her own cleaning (!!!) because there was nothing else for her to do, despite having a cleaning lady. I assume that ‘getting a job’ didn’t feature in her deliberations.
She also complained bitterly because Teddy insisted on spending time with his son from his first marriage.
So Teddy Sheringham bins her eventually - can’t think why - and Nicola is first to beat a path to the door of the magazines. Saying that the split was her idea, obviously, and that she’d been unhappy anyway and was missing the London party scene.
Surprisingly, despite missing the London party scene, she settles in Manchester. I’d love to know why. Next thing you know, she’s set up a ’lifestyle magazine’ to be distributed around Cheshire and the posher bits of Manchester. Which I assume was an excuse to flit around air kissing, attending events and getting free stuff at bars and restaurants? Anyway, still not what you’d call a proper job.
The magazine fails after a few years, in 2010 I think, but not because it wasn’t very good (it wasn’t) or because print was being superseded by the internet. No. According to Nicola, the magazine was “a victim of its own success”. How so? Well, apparently, it was doing SO well that the rival publications (which? I can only think of Cheshire Life that ploughs the same rather dull furrow, and the proper magazines aren’t going to be taking advertising from beauty salons in Altrincham, so I don’t believe this bit) reduced their rate card for advertising, and stole away business from Nicola’s magazine. The unfairness! Nicola whines that she has lost £120k of her own money. That’s what being a business owner involves, Nicola. Not sure where she earned £120k...maybe it was the Hello money for the post-breakup interview?
A white knight (sort of) appears in the shape of a North west magazine publishing business which buys the title and appoints Nicola ‘managing director’, although there’s a separate senior management team who actually make the decisions and do the proper work, so not sure what her duties were. Nicola’s former business partner, female, leaves the business. However, mere months later Nicola gives an interview to the Manchester Evening News announcing that she’s going to do something worthwhile instead of just ‘running’ the magazine. So basically she’s had the boot from the mag but tries to dress it up as her selflessly giving up frivolity to do good.
Now she’s going to give her all to a charity, the five stars appeal, which recruited five ‘stars’ (I use the term loosely) each year as ambassadors and held glitzy fundraisers in Manchester to raise funds for scanners and other hospital equipment. What could have attracted Nicola to such a role? Surely not the glitzy events rife with rich men?
Nicola contrives to get Mandy appointed as a trustee too. Glitzy fundraisers and virtue signalling ahoy!
Shortly after giving up the magazine work (or it giving her up) Nicola starts extracting fees from the Five Stars appeal. Now she’s a paid fundraiser, you see. She’s not an employee of the charity; it has no employees. No, she’s a consultant.
it later emerges that the charity spent more on fundraising, including its events and Nicola’s fees, than it raised. The charity was getting 3p from every pound donated. Suspicious? Manchester Children’s Hospital disassociated itself from the charity and told the Five Stars appeal to remove the hospital’s name from its literature. There was an enquiry. The charity doesn’t seem to exist any more. Ther don’t seem to have been any prosecutions, but it’s very dodgy. The trustees were, at best, asleep at the wheel.
I think that the Smith sisters don’t really get the concept of having a proper job. Who knows what they are doing now?
)
He then basically stalked me for weeks - at my house, my Saturday job... luckily I worked with a very nice guy (also c.30 years old but protective of me!) who threatened to beat him up which did the trick eventually. That attitude is so grim, and still around now. Just the other day my husbands friend (41) was saying how one of his colleagues was fit (16!!). Ugh 
